"Down the Shore" (its the way you say it if you're from New Jersey!!!)

Ocean City, NJ has been our family vacation destination for all our lives. In July, my family and I spent a week enjoying familiar places like Mack & Manco (best pizza ever), Khor's ice cream, Ove's seafood right on the boardwalk, and breakfasts at The Varsity (YUM!). Obviously we spent a lot of time on the beach as well, enjoying the sun, waves, building castles, walking the beach, collecting shells.

My missionary sister Karen and her husband Dave are also in the USA right now, on furlough from church planting in Cameroon. Their boys are AJ (15) and Zac (13). It isn’t often we have our furloughs overlap; one of us is usually overseas. So the time with family was especially sweet. The family photo below was taken at our Fish family reunion at the end of our vacation. Many of the Fish relatives (maybe 40 of us?) gathered at our cousin Nancy’s home in Mullica Hill, NJ. What a blessing to see all the cousins and various generations of family members.


Above: From left is my Mom (Sheila), my brother-in-law Dave, sister Abby, nephew AJ, sister Karen, brother Randy, nephew Zac and me.

Below are various photos from our time away. Most don’t really need captions. Most could have the caption of “Us having fun, creating memories, enjoying the limited time we get together once every few years”…













The Ferris Wheel is a tradition for us to ride… here are views below, inside and from in the air (so you can see how high we go!).




We also love to ride the carousel, ride bikes on the boards, ride those flying swings & the scrambler (I think this was my last time on it– ugh!), and stopping in favorite shops and other places. This year Abby, Zac and I added a morning of parasailing– how cool was that?!?!!!




Randy and Zac have August birthdays, so we celebrated early as a family, enjoying Cookie Monster and Elmo cupcakes.



For some reason we started a tradition of trying on funny hats while at the shore. Not sure why, but they sure do make for fun photos.




Above; Mummers! My Mom grew up in and near Philadelphia, where the Mummers bands are a lifestyle for many. I remember as a kid watching New Year's Day's parades (on TV- never yet live) where so many different Mummers groups would perform. At Ocean City, they invite Mummers from the Philly area to play on the boardwalk at night. My mom was so thrilled to see them and then one of the guys invited her to dance with them... I got great video of her joy as she danced around the boards with them.


Below: enjoying the beach in the early morning quiet.

WGM Meetings

When a missionary returns from the field, WGM takes great care of them (us) with trainings and meetings, as well as special times of worship together. In July we met together for about 10 days.


Re-entry began with a mission sponsored BBQ fellowship, with all of the missionaries who'd recently returned from the mission field. Reconnecting with people who are in the same boat as you (readjusting to the USA) is helpful when you're getting used to the North American culture after 3-4 years away. It was so refreshing to see old friends from Bolivia and many other parts of the world, all missionaries (and their kids) with WGM.




We also had some training seminars during our 10-ish days together.

New Design

As you can see, I've changed my blog design. It is at an appropriate time, since my new prayer cards are soon coming out, and I'm beginning a new term of missionary service (back to Uganda)... I like it and I hope you do too!
If you would like one of my new prayer cards (they're in the end of design phase with the printer right now), please contact me. I've had some weirdos contact me when I had a direct link to my email from this blog, so I removed that page element. But you can reach me through Facebook if you really need to. Thanks!

The IWU Team

10 wonderful ladies came to Uganda in May from Indiana Wesleyan University. 4 of them stayed in my house and apartment (a guest apt. behind my home). Although their trip was cut short due to the British Airways strike, their time was pretty amazing for all of them. I hope to see them this fall at IWU while I'm in the USA!
They ministered doing VBS in 2 churches, helping a lot at Heritage as we tried to reorganize things before school ended (putting books away, etc.), painted a classroom, did chapels ministries for both elementary and secondary, and generally encoruaged us all greatly. Yay IWU team! Thanks for coming!


Above: doing a powerful drama presentation during the secondary chapel.

The next few pictures below are from a dinner we had at a Japanese restaurant to welcome the team and say bye to those leaving the field for furlough.












Above and below: Loofah grows in my yard, thanks to Peter, my watchman. The girls got a kick out of it late one night
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The Lost Shall be FOUND!!!

Remember when I said I had lost about 70 or so photos in May, and was really disappointed? Well, guess what, )... I found them ALL today! My computer did an update on the photos program, and magically- miraculously- the lost photos were recovered! I'm SOOO happy! So I'll be loading a lot of photos here... Ready?


Teresa & Jean and I took some fun shots at the Stevenson's when all the HIS faculty was invited for dinner and fellowship. The above and next several photos (below) are from that night.








Yes, this is a real snake skin at the Stevenson's. I think it was a Boa skin... and the combined height/length of Jean (at 5'6 or so), Teresa (at 5'5) and Jill (at 6'3) was too short still when measured against it.


I wanted you to also see the width of it- wider than Teresa in this picture...




Instruments from around Africa that the Stevenson's have collected over the years, displayed on one of their walls.


Francis is the Heritage music teacher and tongue-roller extraordinaire


Jean didn't actually climb into this pot, but it sure looked like it! :)


The Coke man sometimes delivers Cokes in this cart. These kids climbed in and looked like they were having a lot of fun one day as I drove past. Too cute.



Playing around with my camera at school one morning, we ended up with cute shots like this one--- Clockwise surrounding me is Star poking at Kahan, then Bertha (best expression!!!), Tom, Lydia and Tiya.


Tiya posing with -who's glasses?-! Tiya, you look puurtty!!


Kahan shared his testimony with the 5th graders in May. So proud of him!


One morning in May, my Monday guard, Walter came with a surprise for me. A Woodland Kingfisher bird! I'm nearly directly quoting here, "A bird flew into your garage door at around 7 a.m., and it knocked itself out. So I tied a string around its leg and waited for it to wake up. I wanted to save it for you." Umm. I guess they know I love these birds, but I don't want to keep one as a pet! I was up and around, even talking to my guard at other times, but he didn't tell me about the bird until nearly 2 hours after he caught the bird. He came with the bird still tied and showed it to me. It was so scared, of course, but my guard really wanted me to get a photo of it before he released it. So I've got an up close and personal photo of the kingfisher who, I hope, has learned its lesson (not to blend a garage door, string and my guard in one morning).


This is "Ensenene" (pronounced En-Sen-Nay-Nay; not sure if I got the spelling right but it is close), which is Luganda for grasshoppers. They are a favorite snack amongst many Ugandans. Nope, I've not tried them and don't plan to. Some say they taste nutty and they're crunchy. I'll just trust that opinion.


Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat... the musical was performed at HIS in May. What a wonderful job the kids did! I can't think of one person who wasn't involved somehow- whether in acting, singing, music, set, costumes, etc.- it was a great production and I'm so proud of our students and families of HIS.


The HIS Kindergarten graduated May 21st and their fabulous teacher, Alicia, had them draw pictures of what they want to be when they grow up. Too cute!


After the mucial, we celebrated with cake, cookies, etc. along with Logan, Lubega (Joseph stage hands), Lino and Solomon (both actors)and the exausted and "Amazing" director, Keeley!!!


Bec and me in the classroom. Hey Bex! :)


Tom (left) and Solomon reviewing materials for finals.


Praying for Leo after he asked Christ to be his Savior. Sigh. Happy moments!